Clinton Opponents Hone New Barbs and Attacks as 2016 Campaign Nears

Image

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaking in December in New York. As she prepares for a likely presidential campaign in 2016, the cottage industry that opposes her is evolving to attack her on new grounds.CreditCreditMike Coppola/Getty Images for RFK Ripple of Hope

First, she was called the bra-burning feminist with a degree from Wellesley. Then, she was the aggressively political spouse from Arkansas who plotted behind closed doors. Today, she is the millionaire elitist who socializes in New York City and the Hamptons.

Few modern political figures inspire the animus that Hillary Rodham Clinton generates, and the cottage industry that opposes her never really goes out of business. But as Mrs. Clinton prepares for a likely presidential campaign in 2016, the sprawling network is evolving to attack her on new grounds.

There are “super PACs” with names like Women Against Hillary, Just Say No to Hillary, Stop Hillary and Defeat Hillary. The Republican National Committee recently introduced a website PoorHillaryClinton.com, which mocks Mrs. Clinton’s wealth.

While all politicians endure scrutiny and efforts by the other side to define them, the attacks on Mrs. Clinton often take on a personal tone, which her defenders say is driven by an electorate still coming to terms with the possibility of a female president.

But the message against Mrs. Clinton before 2016 is shifting, highlighting new, less gender-based attacks than those leveled during the 2008 campaign. She is no longer caricatured as the embodiment of a 1960s feminist pushing her husband’s administration to the left. Instead, Mrs. Clinton is criticized as overly cautious and centrist and out of touch with average Americans. Last summer she said that her family was “dead broke” upon leaving the White House, yet she has made millions off her books and is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches.

Richard H. Collins, a Dallas investor whose website Stop Her Now seven years ago suggested that Mrs. Clinton was a witch and featured her bludgeoning other politicians with a “Hillary hammer,” said he had no plans to resurrect the effort in 2016. And when the super PAC The Hillary Project introduced a “Slap Hillary” game online in 2013, many Republicans were quick to denounce the gimmick as sexist.

Sexist attacks were “a dumb thing to do in 2008, and will be a dumb thing to do in 2016,” said Tim Miller, executive director of America Rising, an anti-Democrat super PAC. “The most effective arguments against Secretary Clinton have absolutely nothing to do with her gender,” he added.

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Kirsten Kukowski, said it is not an “either/or” question of whether to point out scandals from Mrs. Clinton’s early years or her current record and finances. Internal polling has shown, she said, that attacks on Mrs. Clinton’s more recent years resonate more effectively with voters. (The R.N.C. is also assembling a book on Mrs. Clinton and has dispatched opposition researchers to Little Rock, Ark.)

There is no question that Mrs. Clinton, after two decades in public life, remains divisive: 50 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of her, and 45 percent have an unfavorable opinion, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in November.

Unlike in 2008, when Mrs. Clinton’s campaign largely ignored the “stop Hillary” websites and the sale of “No Way in Hellary” barbecue aprons, this time Clinton loyalists have formed their own groups to counter attacks early.

They say they are keenly aware of what happened to Senator John Kerry during the 2004 election, when an independent conservative group, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, attacked his military record in the Vietnam War. The attacks stuck and contributed to Mr. Kerry’s loss to President George W. Bush.

Image

Anti-Clinton groups are focusing on the 2012 attack in Benghazi.CreditMatt Rourke/Associated Press

He said criticism that she is wealthy and out of touch would be an easy one to combat, particularly if the Republican nominee is Jeb Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, or Mitt Romney, whose personal wealth became a point of contention in his 2012 campaign and who recently told donors that he was considering running again in 2016.

It was not long ago that conservatives were “raising money off the caricature of her as a dyed-in-the-wool socialist,” Mr. Brock said.

The fight to define, or redefine, Mrs. Clinton will become only more intense. For Republicans, the attacks not only excite the conservative base, but they can help shape a narrative to weaken Mrs. Clinton’s chances with the broader electorate.

Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group that produced the 2008 anti-Clinton documentary “Hillary: The Movie,” has another documentary in preproduction set to premiere during the 2016 campaign. That film will mostly focus on Mrs. Clinton’s career as a New York senator through her time as secretary of state, and will look at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United and a longtime critic of the Clintons, said Mrs. Clinton’s time in Arkansas and in the White House were less relevant than her ties to the Obama administration and her family’s finances.

“People have to be reminded of these things that she was involved in, but are they the most important? No,” he said.

Next month, Bruce Fein, a lawyer who is close to Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, plans to introduce a website called HillaryWatch.com that will largely focus on Mrs. Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy positions and her views on executive power. (He joked that it could be called “Queen Hillary.”)

The idea, he said, grew out of a pamphlet that defended Mr. Paul’s foreign policy positions. “We want to destroy these myths about Hillary, one of which is her great competence,” Mr. Fein said. A spokesman for Mr. Paul said the senator had met Mr. Fein but never talked with him about an anti-Hillary website.

The cottage industry caricaturing Mrs. Clinton has its own kitschy paraphernalia, some of which seems more rooted in the early mockery of her than on her more recent record, like bumper stickers that read “Even Bill Doesn’t Want Hillary!”

The creators behind the “Hillary Nutcracker” plan to reintroduce the item — which, as the name suggests, cracks open nuts between Mrs. Clinton’s thighs — the day she declares her candidacy. They expect it to resonate with both pro- and anti-Hillary customers.

“If you see a bossy, polarizing broad with ideas you don’t like, then that’s what you get,” said Gibson Carothers, one of the creators. He added, “If you see a tough, strong leader with ideas you do like, then that’s what you get.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Clinton Opponents Hone New Barbs and Attacks as 2016 Campaign Nears. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe